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Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Rural Connectivity in India

I've got some comments to make on the 'infanticide' debate, but I'll leave them for later in the week. On another front today, Infoworld has an interesting piece on what it calls projects to bridge 'the digital divide' in India. Now I know Atanu has strong views on the uses and abuses of this term in the Indian context (BTW I read at the weekend that 1 in 4 children in the US are now using computers at the age of five). My point with this post is not to get into this (I suppose we inevitably will have some interesting debate about it a little more downstream). My point is to see whether any of our RISC colleagues would like to comment a bit more on what all this implies and where it is going. I.E. what is the state of play on this right now?

India plans $2.7 billion IT investment

Government embarks on four-year effort to bridge digital divide

By John Ribeiro, IDG News Service November 03, 2003

BANGALORE, INDIA - The Indian government plans to spend $2.7 billion over the next four years to bridge the country's digital divide, according to a government official. "You do not want to get into a situation where information and communications technology, and its progress create social chasms and economic chasms between the haves and have-nots," said Rajeeva Ratna Shah, secretary for industrial policy and promotion in the federal government, at a conference Sunday in Bangalore, India.

As part of its investment in technology and infrastructure, the government plans to introduce a voice-based information technology device that and can be used by Indian villagers regardless of the language they speak. "(The device) should be able to take commands orally," Shah said. "There must be total interactivity and literacy should not act as a barrier. Language should also not be a barrier. We are moving towards that.'' Shah did not however disclose the technical specifications of the device. This is not the first time engineers in India have attempted to design a low-cost computer device for rural use. However, the Simputer, a Linux-based handheld mobile computer, with a target price tag of about $200, ailed to take off because of insufficient interest in its target market. A number of nongovernment organizations, multilateral aid agencies, educational institutions and state governments have also launched projects for bridging the digital divide in India, where more than 70 percent of the population live in rural areas where literacy levels are low and poverty is grinding.

The corporate sector also is discovering that bridging the digital divide could translate into new market opportunities. For instance, HP Labs India, which was set up in Bangalore by Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), is developing products appropriate for India's rural markets. HP is based in Palo Alto, California. Intel Corp., based in Santa Clara, California, has invested in research at the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai to explore the viability of wireless Internet connectivity in rural areas. But the investment Shah outlined Sunday is the first time the federal government has put its weight and considerable funds behind such an initiative. A pilot project on broadband connectivity for rural areas is already under way in the state of Uttar Pradesh, according to Shah. In another trial project near Delhi, postal employees are downloading e-mail on wireless handheld devices and delivering them to villagers, who then use the devices to reply to the e-mail, Shah said. The government also plans to introduce a government-to-business portal, which will allow foreign investors to interact directly with the government, and "enable us to cut corruption," Shah said.
Source: Info World
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Claus Vistesen and Edward Hugh are proud and happy to announce that they are now working as "featured analysts" with a new Boston-based start-up - Emerginvest.

Claus and Edward have used a new, updated, methodology in order to identify a group of 13 emerging economies which we consider are going to outperform both the rest of the emerging economy group and the OECD economies in terms of a number of key performance indicators over the 2008 - 2020 horizon.

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In particular we see the move by the investment community towards emerging markets as one of the most effective and direct ways to address those issues of inter-country wealth and income imbalances which have plagued our planet for so long now - namely by getting the money from the rich who have it to the poor who need it.

Sending investment to emerging economies is also a way of addressing the underlying imbalances which exist between the relatively older populations of the developed economies who increasingly need to save, and the relatively younger emerging economies who can benefit from the investment of those savings in their countries. So in a way you can both ensure the future of your own pension and help attack poverty at one and the same time. This type of possibility is normally known in economics as "win-win".

The oldest known source and most probable origin for the expression "baker's dozen" dates to the 13th century in one of the earliest English statutes, instituted during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216-1272), called the Assize of Bread and Ale. Bakers who were found to have shortchanged customers could be liable to severe punishment. To guard against the punishment of losing a hand to an axe, a baker would give 13 for the price of 12, to be certain of not being known as a cheat. Specifically, the practice of baking 13 items for an intended dozen was to prevent "short measure", on the basis that one of the 13 could be lost, eaten, burnt or ruined in some way, leaving the baker with the original dozen.

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Claus Vistesen is a 23 year old macroeconomist who is on the point of finishing his MSc in Applied Economics and Finance from the Copenhagen Business School. His primary research interests are international finance and international macroeconomics. Claus is especially interested in how the changing structure of global and national demographics impacts on local macroeconomic performance. Moreover - and as the wonk he ultimately is - he also takes a considerable interest issues and methodologies associated with econometrics, and this is an interest he intends to develop in his postgraduate research.

About Edward

Edward 'the bonobo' is a Catalan macroeconomist and economic demographer of British extraction, now based in Barcelona. By inclination he is a macroeconomist, but his deep-seated obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of contemporary demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

He is currently working on a book with the provisional working title "Population, the Ultimate Non-renewable Resource".